Losing someone sucks. There is no other way to put it, and honestly, the scramble to find information afterward makes it even heavier. If you are looking for obituaries in Paragould Arkansas, you’re probably either grieving or trying to track down a piece of family history. Paragould is a tight-knit place. It's the kind of town where people still check the paper, but things have shifted a lot lately.
The digital age changed how we remember people in Greene County. It used to be that the Paragould Daily Press was the only game in town. Now? It’s a mix of funeral home websites, social media scraps, and digital archives that can be a real pain to navigate if you don't know the local landscape.
Basically, finding a record of a life lived in Paragould requires knowing which "digital porch" the community is sitting on at the moment.
Why Finding Obituaries in Paragould Arkansas Can Be Tricky
You’d think a simple Google search would solve everything. It doesn't.
Sometimes, families choose not to publish a traditional obituary because the costs in print newspapers have skyrocketed. It’s expensive! Other times, the information is siloed on a specific funeral home’s website and doesn’t show up on the first page of search results for days.
Paragould has two primary funeral service providers that handle the vast majority of local passing: Heath Funeral Home and Mitchell Funeral Home. If you are looking for someone who passed recently, your best bet—seriously—is to go straight to their specific "Tribute" or "Obituary" pages.
Heath Funeral Home, located on West Sterling Street, has been around since 1945. They have a very robust online archive. Mitchell Funeral Home on West Main is equally historical. Most people in Paragould have a family "loyalty" to one or the other, sort of like how people feel about Ford versus Chevy.
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The Shift from Print to Digital
The Paragould Daily Press used to be the daily bread of information. These days, it’s part of a larger media group, and its frequency has changed. Because of this, the "immediacy" of a print obituary has faded.
If you're looking for an obituary from three days ago, you might not find it in a physical paper yet. You have to look at the Greene County Arkansas digital community groups.
Facebook is, for better or worse, the modern-day town square in Northeast Arkansas. There are groups like "Paragould Northside/Southside" or "Greene County Neighbors" where folks post funeral arrangements long before the official notice hits a database. It’s informal. It’s sometimes messy. But it’s where the actual news travels fastest in 72450.
Historical Research and Genealogy in Greene County
What if you aren't looking for someone who died last week? What if you're doing the "ancestory.com" thing and need a record from 1974?
That is a different beast entirely.
The Greene County Public Library on North 12th Street is your powerhouse here. They have microfilm. Yes, that old-school, crank-the-handle microfilm that makes your eyes hurt after twenty minutes. But it is the only place you will find the "lost" obituaries of Paragould that never made it onto the internet.
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The library’s genealogy room is a treasure trove. They have records that predate the internet by a century. If you are out of state, you can sometimes call them, and a librarian might—if they aren't swamped—help you look up a specific date.
Leveraging the Arkansas State Archives
Sometimes the local trail goes cold. If you can’t find a mention in the Paragould records, remember that many people from this area may have been treated in Jonesboro or even Memphis.
- Check the Jonesboro Sun.
- Look at regional hospitals like St. Bernards.
- Search social security death indexes.
It’s also worth noting that Paragould has several historic cemeteries like Linwood. Often, the headstone tells a story that the obituary missed. Linwood is massive and serves as a literal stone map of the city’s founding families.
What Most People Get Wrong About Local Death Notices
People assume every death results in an obituary. That's a myth.
An obituary is a paid notice. A "death notice" is a tiny, free blurb that just lists the name and date. If the family didn't have the funds or the desire to write a full bio, there might not be a paragraph describing their love for the St. Louis Cardinals or their 40 years at the Emerson Electric plant.
In Paragould, we see a lot of "Memorial Services" now where the family just posts a flyer at the local Casey’s or on their personal Facebook wall. If you can’t find a formal obituary, try searching the person’s name + "Facebook" + "Paragould." You’d be surprised what pops up in the "Posts" tab from friends sharing memories.
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Another thing: Check the Arkansas Gravestones project. Volunteers go around taking photos of every headstone in the county. It’s a 100% free resource and often includes more "truth" than a polished obituary.
Practical Steps for Your Search
If you are currently hunting for information, do not just stay on the main Google search page.
- Visit the big two funeral home sites directly. Don't wait for the search engine to index them. Go to Heath and Mitchell’s websites and use their internal search bars.
- Use the "Site:" operator. Type
site:paragoulddailypress.com "Name of Person"into Google. This forces the engine to only look at that specific news source. - The Library is your friend. If the death was before 2005, the internet is going to be spotty. You need the microfilm or the Greene County Historical and Genealogical Society.
- Check the Northeast Arkansas regional papers. Sometimes people in Paragould have their obits run in the Clay County Courier or the Township Journal if they had roots in those smaller outlying areas like Marmaduke or Delaplaine.
Final Insights for Finding Records
Finding obituaries in Paragould Arkansas is about blending old-school persistence with new-school digital sleuthing. The information exists, but it’s fragmented between two main funeral homes, a dwindling local paper, and the messy, vibrant ecosystem of social media.
For the most accurate results, start with the funeral homes. For the most colorful stories, look to the community Facebook pages. For the history of the town and your ancestors, go sit in the library on 12th Street and start cranking that microfilm.
The record of a life in a town like Paragould is rarely lost; it’s just usually tucked away in a place that requires a little bit of local knowledge to find.
Actionable Next Steps:
- For recent deaths (last 5 years): Search the digital archives of Heath Funeral Home and Mitchell Funeral Home first.
- For historical records (pre-2000): Contact the Greene County Public Library genealogy department to request a microfilm search if you have a specific death date.
- For missing information: Cross-reference the Arkansas Gravestones Project to confirm burial locations, which often leads back to the officiating funeral home and their records.
- For community updates: Join the "Greene County Arkansas History and Genealogy" group on Facebook to ask locals for help with specific family branches.